What are you playing now

[Your Best Buddy]

Finished Severance: Blade of Darkness, one forgets how disappointing the ending is, a shame.

 

Started on the Game of Thrones rpg, nice to play as a gammer rather than the generic blue eyed, brown haired, stubbly thirty year old gent from most other games, and the dog is pleasingly ugly. I don't envy Mr Cosmo recording all those lines of exposition, still it seems quite enjoyable so far and I most definitely like the combat.

What game has a blue-eyed protagonist?

 

The common template seems to be stubbly brown hair on the head and face + brown eyes. Avoiding any kind of hair style, facial or other, or rare traits like red hair and freckles or blonde hair. The only place blonde hair'd characters is popular in videogames is Japan and they don't depict their characters look cartoony. I'd find a ginger, blonde, or albino character a refreshing change from the Nth brunette.

[Calax]

 

Played a bit of ME2 and the Citadel DLC for ME3.

 

Honestly if they'd made the Citadel DLC the complete Epilogue for the entire series, I think it would have been much better received. I mean it's basically already an Epilogue it's just that the game in general isn't designed for a proper epilogue, so it gets stuck in there randomly. It certainly fit the tone of the two previous games a bit better (with VERY little pessimism as compared to the rest of the game, while the others are very much on the optimism side of things).

 

In isolation, the Citadel DLC would work as an epilogue.  But in the context of the rest of the game, IMO, it didn't make a whole lot of sense.  Setting up a shore leave party for your crew while you're desperately racing against time to stop the Reapers from destroying Earth?

 

If they'd somehow worked the story where they could fit the DLC after the red/blue/green choice, then I could see it.  As it stands, it kind of stood out as a weird thing to do in the middle of a universal catastrophe.

 

That was my point. But IMO the game was the wrong tone from the get go compared to the rest of the series, than the DLC being the wrong tone. The entire series started and was built on optimism and hope as the general feel. ME3 hauls through and it becomes pessimism and a "war story". ME3 also relied on you having already met and boned with your characters to drive your interpersonal bonds. By comparison ME1 and ME2 were driven mainly by the fact you were growing to know your crew (although repeating the same "Collect a retinue to save the day" story would have been bad). 

 

Basically ME3 should have been a side story within the ME universe, rather than a primary entry. Because it was to much of a deviation from the style and tone of the previous games.

[GhostofAnakin]

It was 7 years in the making, but I finally beat the endboss in Gears of War!

 

All these hints online about using the sniper rifle or using the troika, and it ended up I was able to do it by simply using the default assault rifle (lancer?) to damage him after the torque bow and grenades got rid of his Kryll swarm.

[melkathi]

Played a couple of hours of Defiance after a long break. Had some fun actually. Probably why two hours passed when I was just going to quickly finish this and log off.

[GhostofAnakin]

Played a couple of hours of Defiance after a long break. Had some fun actually. Probably why two hours passed when I was just going to quickly finish this and log off.

 

Has much changed?  I haven't played Defiance since last summer.  I got bored with the fact that you don't get "stronger" as you level up.  So I never felt I was actually being rewarded for all the time I put in.  Some newbie scrub who just logged on for the first time had just as much of a shot at killing something as I did.

[melkathi]

They added some scaling mechanics, so you do get stronger. And the more players are around, the stronger the enemies.

You now have armour plating which slowly deteriorates (and gets repaired at a new box next to the ammo boxes) as your armor takes damage.

Grenades now function mostly like Borderlands: you equip the type you want and collected generic 'nade ammo.

You get spikes to set a small aoe buff and stims for healing and combat buffs.

Incursions are the new big thing like sieges and arkfalls - a series of roadside emergencies that lead up to a siege once they ahve all been beaten.

Arkbreaks are instanced arkfalls called down by players. Minor ones can be soloed, major ones need a team of ideally 24 players.

 

I am probably forgetting stuff. But I think those are the major changes.

[GhostofAnakin]

Is the lag still an issue?  Especially during Arkfalls, the lag was ridiculous.

 

Also, it's good they tweaked the ability to get stronger as you go up in levels.  It just seemed so dumb that someone who'd dedicated months playing the game was no more of a threat to kill an enemy than someone who literally started playing that hour.

[melkathi]

PC never had the lag issues XBOX had, so I can't comment

 

When Incursions were first added, you had 80+ players in one spot. Enemies died before they even spawned. That has quieted down some now that a lot of players moved on to different content - running Expert Co-ops for Chimera rep.

Edited May 20, 2014 by melkathi

[GhostofAnakin]

Hmm.  Okay.  I used to ignore the Arkfalls altogether because I knew I'd just get lagged so badly I'd have to restart my XBox because everything would freeze up.  Which sucked because you got a lot of XP and loot and stuff from completing Arkfalls.  Arguably the easiest way to level up.

[melkathi]

And open world events are some of the most fun to be had in online games.

[Drowsy Emperor]

Mostly gaming CS:GO right now, but the fact that 95% of the players in competetive are rude to the bone makes me consider quiting it for now. Remember a time when gaming MMO's and online games equaled a good time. Also been playing some Age of Mythology: Extended Edition - fun game but having alot of issues with it on Steam, taking forever to load and crashes alot.

 

Thinking about buying the new King's Bounty: Dark Side - but it's still a early access game, might be wise to wait with buying it.

 

Can't wait for Pillars of Eternity - as of right now the only game I'm really looking forward to.

 

I tried CS:GO for a bit and apart from the sluggish aiming I simply didn't feel like it brought anything new to the table that makes it worth playing. I've been playing CS on and off ever since release, it was hands down the most popular multiplayer game in Serbia - but its a little long in the tooth now and no amount of graphical pimping is going to change that.

 

I'm enjoying TF2 much more now.

[Keyrock]

I played a bit of Race the Sun this morning.  Really fantastic game.  It's one of those just one more level type addictive games.  I had to pull myself away so I wouldn't be late to work.  I'm definitely looking forward to playing some more.  The minimalist graphics work really well and are surprisingly pleasing to the eye.  It's like flying at high speed through an Apple commercial, minus the pretentiousness. 

[Oerwinde]

Beat Game of Thrones with Alester. God damn thats a dark game.

[Oner]

Transistor is...very in medias res, to say the least.

[GhostofAnakin]

Playing early on in Wolfenstein: The New Order.  I'm probably still in the tutorial stage of the game.  A lot of shooting/killing, very little story being fleshed out at this point.

[Majek]

Shadowrun Dragonfall. Riggers really are quite powerful, almost as powerful as my OP kung fu troll.

[Calax]

I think I put my finger on what really really bugs me about the whole Catalyst deal with ME3. In all three ME games what you're seeking is never certain. The Conduit on Ilos, What's beyond the Omega 4 Relay, and What is the Catalyst. However in the first two games it's explicitly stated that simply showing up at these locations does something good. The Search for the catalyst doesn't take priority at all, and the entire thing is built on a shrug of a shrug. You don't even know if the weapon itself will work and yet you're building it (or even if it's a weapon when you get down to it).

 

I think that's just the major thing that I've been finding so frustrating about ME3, beyond the tonal idiocy that I've mentioned before. You don't really have a truely concrete goal, and the entire thing is way to gamey. "We don't know what this'll do but this is a video game so it'll work out somehow" the game cries at you when you play it. Because the devs had built up the Reapers to much and couldn't think of a plausible way for everyone else to win against them (even though you could, using Mass Effect fields, literally fling ships at your enemy and kill them...)

 

... I feel like i should write up a post mortem of ME3 and send it to Bioware.

[Humanoid]

Hit a terminal bug on Broken Sword 5, save says about 80% through the game. Blah.

 

 

Attempting to pick up the map in the cave.

 

 

Reports missing animation. Now obviously people have completed the game, so it might be my version, GOG patched to version 1.11. Seen the reported by others with no present resolution, and have reinstalled my game to no avail, so it's either some incompatibility or the current GOG version is problematic.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I'm in the first maps of Wolfenstein: New Order. This is a pretty intense game with a lot of gore, see more of my comments in the Pictures of my games-thread.

[melkathi]

I'm in the first maps of Wolfenstein: New Order. This is a pretty intense game with a lot of gore, see more of my comments in the Pictures of my games-thread.

 

If you are starting to post Wolfenstein screenshots, I better start playing cute stuff again to balance things out

[Malcador]

Playing Democracy 3, is alright.  I've purged religious people from society and have Christian terrorists trying to kill me (not really sure how I did that), but have done fun stuff like legalized all drugs and tax them heavily. 

[Humanoid]

Was going to buy Democracy 3 at the current Humble sale, but it looks like they're only just selling a Steam copy, which makes no sense given that it's available from both GOG and direct from the developers DRM-free. Ah well, waiting.

[WorstUsernameEver]

Transistor is...very in medias res, to say the least.

"Did.. Did I miss the intro movie? Where's the menu? Did I press New Game by accident?!"

[Oner]

 

Transistor is...very in medias res, to say the least.

"Did.. Did I miss the intro movie? Where's the menu? Did I press New Game by accident?!"

 

Yup.

[AGX-17]

Tokyo Jungle. It's the most gloriously stupid thing I've seen in a while. A pack of Pomeranians getting slaughtered by dairy cows in a sewer with thumping techno music in the background isn't something you see every day.